“Looks like a sick penguin,” laughed Louise Johnson.
“Why in the world is she standing there all alone?” cried Laura, and hurried on ahead, calling, “Elizabeth—Elizabeth, come here. I want you.”
Elizabeth, standing in water up to her ankles, hesitated for a moment, swept the wide stretch of blue with a wistful searching glance, and then obeyed the summons.
“Why were you standing there, dear?” Laura questioned gently, leading her away from the laughing curious girls.
Elizabeth lifted earnest eyes to the kind face bending towards her.
“I promised Olga I’d wade every day—so I had to.” Then she broke out, “O Miss Laura, do you think she’ll come back? She went all alone, and she isn’t anywhere in sight.”
Laura drew the shivering little figure close to her side. “Why, of course she’ll come back, Elizabeth. Why shouldn’t she? She’s been out so scores of times, just as I have. What makes you worry so, child?”
Elizabeth drew a long shuddering breath. “I can’t help it,” she sighed. “The water always makes me so afraid, Miss Laura!”
She lifted such a white miserable face that Laura saw it was really true—she was in the grip of a deadly terror. She drew the trembling girl down beside her on the warm sand. “Let’s sit here a little while,” she said, and for a few minutes they sat in silence, while further up the beach girls were wading and swimming and splashing each other, their shouts of laughter making a merry din. Some were diving from the pier, and one stood on a high springboard. Suddenly this one flung out her arms and sprang off, her slim body seeming to float between sky and water, as she swept downward in a graceful curving line.
Laura caught her breath nervously as her eyes followed the slender figure that looked so very small outstretched between sky and water, and Elizabeth covered her eyes with a little moan.